Solving a Shop Dilemma with SOLIDWORKS and Stratasys 3D Printing

by Jeff Parker

We have a dilemma:

We purchased a peanut dispenser (for styrofoam packing peanuts) to make it easier and CLEANER to use this when packing parts for customers. When it showed up it contained the bag, valve, pulleys, and a bracket & mount for wall mounting. Normally, this would be great, but we wanted to mount this to one of the legs of the material racks where the shipping center is located. First thought, can SOLIDWORKS and Stratasys tools help?

Step #1: Working the Problem & Brainstorming Solutions

We considered mounting the wall mount bracket to the leg on all sides. The issue with this was that we couldn’t find an option that did not require custom hardware or modifying the bracket, leg or both. So from here, we decided to consider creating our own bracket for the top of the leg to give us the following:

The best location

Allowing full rotation of the bag

Best height off the ground

Floor space clearance

This is what we came up with…

From here, I took this “humble chicken scratch” you see above and used it to design the parts in SOLIDWORKS.

Along with the parts and assembly, I also created a drawing of the “Pin” top view at a 1:1 scale to print and verify the bracket matches the design.

After verifying the bracket slot design in the pin and the measurements for the cap, we exported the STLs from SOLIDWORKS and then printed them out on our Stratasys Fortus 450mc.

And here you have it, the finished printed parts.

After test fitting the cap, pin, and bracket, we performed the installation.

About Jeff Parker

Jeff is a SOLIDWORKS Elite AE & Senior Tech Support Engineer at GoEngineer
He is also the Co-founder of the Yakima user group, awesome dad/husband, soccer fanatic (Go Sounders!), mustang lover (car not animal), and user of SOLIDWORKS since 1996.